Thursday, July 15, 2004

Storm Clouds to the South

People will talk and they are talking openly about getting Jim McGreevey to resign or replacing him as the candidate in the next gubernatorial race. (Call girls to the left of me, beach boys to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you, and I don't know what it is I can do. . .).

The party leadership knows what it wants to do. Call Jon Corzine. Steve Kornacki reports on NJPolitics.com: "Corzine plainly wants the job. Those close to him say he is preparing to run -- in 2009. That’s the politically correct line, since McGreevey would presumably be wrapping up his second term then. Corzine himself has ruled out a primary challenge to McGreevey next year. . . But if the heads of the state’s various Democratic fiefdoms came together and asked McGreevey to step aside, Corzine might not need a primary to replace McGreevey. Or, under that scenario, he could simply go back on his word and force a primary. With so much organizational support behind him, he’d probably be favored to beat McGreevey anyway."

And if that doesn't work, surely the one thing the state Democratic party is good at is parachuting in winning candidates at the last minute!

Back here in Mapleberry, rain clouds gather but not in time to dampen this week's issue of the News-Record, hot off presses with Round III of Bette White vs Fred Profeta slugfest! Looks like Fred Profeta organized a whole gang of writers to back him up this week, most of whom come across as if they're auditioning for the role of baton-twirling cops at the (possible) new police site: "OK, keep moving, folks. Show's over. Nothin' more to talk about. Let's just move it along."

Last word (for now) went to Carol Buchanan of the Hilton Neighborhood Association, who termed last week's White-site spear-carrier Alison Ziefert "insulting" and "arrogant" for asserting (without evidence) that the Hilton organization was bullied by the former mayor into voting against the Bette White site. "I think people who feel strongly about issues and actively perservere to achieve what they believe is best for the township should not be discouraged or considered suspect," she said pointedly to Wannabe TC Member Ziefert.

And this just in from out-of-work spies (and aren't there a lot these days?):

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being
sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an
ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of
criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there,
and higher."